JOUR 353 and 355 - Fall 2006

Required Reading: All online bureau students should be well-versed on issues in Annapolis and Washington -- and on the legislative process. This means reading the home pages and local section fronts of the Washington Post or Washington Times each day, along with Baltimore's Sun. You should also be up on technology issues--for obvious reasons. So start reading the business section of the newspaper.

Because the field is changing so fast, I also recommend that you periodically read a few sites about the business of online journalism: Vincent Flanders' Web Pages That Suck (learn good Web design by looking at bad design!) is both amusing and useful; Online Journalism Review, American Journalism Review, Columbia Journalism Review and Editor & Publisher Online all carry columns and stories about new media. 

Dress: Dress as you would for a paying job as a reporter in an online newsroom. No shorts, jeans, T-shirts or tennis shoes, please. Dress pants and shirts and blazers or nice sweaters are recommended, in case you are called on to go out for an interview. Skirts or dresses are also great, but not necessary unless you are trying to get into a legislative or congressional hearing room or floor session. Exceptions to the code can be made with prior permission of your instructor. (For instance, if you're going out to interview homeless people, I'll likely ask you to dress casually.)

Telephones: We have no office secretary or receptionist, so please share in answering incoming calls and in taking messages for each other. Be sure when taking a message to get the caller's name, phone number, message, day and time of call. When answering all phone calls, please say your full name and "Maryland Newsline." It makes you sound professional. 

Be sure to periodically check for voice mail messages, by dialing 301-405-5100. You'll also have to type in the last five digits of our phone line (42694) and our five-digit password (I'll give it to you the first day) to retrieve calls on the office phones. 

Note that personal long-distance calls cannot be made on our lines. We get monthly printouts of calls and enforce this rule.

Our main newsroom number is: 301-314-2694. My number is the bureau is 301-405-2696.

Our fax number is: 301-314-2566.

The Washington bureau number is: 202-628-1677. Its director is Adrianne Flynn.

The Annapolis bureau number is: 301-858-5431. The director is Tony Barbieri.

The broadcast bureau director is Cassandra Clayton. She's reachable at 301-405-7526.

Who We Are: If someone asks who we are, you can tell them something along these lines: Maryland Newsline is a student-staffed online newsmagazine run by the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism and edited by a teacher with many years of experience as a professional journalist. We cover state and federal politics, school and health issues, business and technology, and courts and criminal justice. We package content from Capital News Service--our print and TV sister bureaus in Annapolis, Washington and College Park--and also produce our own work, focusing on Maryland issues. Print stories from CNS are fed to subscriber papers in Maryland, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia--including Baltimore's Sun, The Washington Post and The Washington Times. Television stories for Maryland Newsline can be seen on UMTV, which also airs on Prince George’s and Montgomery County cable.

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Copyright © 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 Chris Harvey, for The University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.